Thursday, February 19, 2015

It is not news that our bodies, ecosystem and environment are plaqued in estrogen and many other hormones (pesticides and antibiotics). For many, puberty has been documented as occurring as early as eight years old, and recently there have been reports of babies in China developing breasts.

Most of us know we unwittingly get synthetic estrogens (endocrine disrupters) from plastics like BPA, petroleum based products, detergents, cosmetics, furniture, carpeting, thermal receipts and on our food from agriculture chemicals like pesticides, herbicides and fungicides (a good reason to buy organic).

Xenia's Note: Organic does not always mean "Pesticide-Free". Some pesticides approved by Certified Organic applications are very toxic. Click here for details: (Berkeley.EDU)

SURPRISE!

1. Flax

Flax and especially flax meal has the image of being a healthy superfood. But flax and flax products are at the top of phytoestrogen-containing foods, with a whopping hundred grams of flax packing an astounding 379,380 micrograms of estrogen compared with 2.9 micrograms for a fruit like watermelon. Flax is now widely found in baked goods like bread, bagels and muffins, snack foods, cereals, pasta, drink mixes and is used as a protein-substitute in poultry feed, swine feed, beef and dairy feeds.

Xenia's Note: Check with your farmer or rancher and ask if they are using flax.

What is the second highest phytoestrogen-containing food in most lists? Soy, which packs 103,920 micrograms of estrogen per 100 grams. Low in calories and with no cholesterol, soy has been a mainstay protein of many cultures for centuries and is considered nature's perfect alternative to meat by many vegetarians and vegans. It has been hailed as a "good" estrogen that could prevent breast cancer and serve as an alternative for hormone replacement therapy, traditionally made from pregnant mare urine.

Yet the bloom has partially fallen off soy's rose. Its possible cancer prevention properties were called into question after some animal studies and groups like the American Cancer Society found themselves defending its moderate use. Like flax, unlabeled GMO soybeans dominate the market and have been linked to sterility and infant death in hamsters. ALTERNET

Unfortunately, most "research" that assures the public that hormones used in meat production or milk production (like Monsanto's rBGH) result in less estrogen are funded by Big Ag. Two features betray the Big Ag-funded research —it claims there is no difference between hormones that occur "naturally" in the human body and synthetic hormones, and it claims there are no residues of the latter. If synthetic hormones are so safe, why would we mind residues? The European Union disagrees about the dangers and boycotts US beef, which is swimming in the hormones oestradiol-17, trenbolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol.

Are organically produced foods more nutritious?

The USDA makes no claims that organic foods are more nutritious than conventionally-grown foods; they are produced using different methods. For example, organic meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Click Here to learn more

Just When You Thought You Could Sleep at Night

CropLife America members include such bastions of corporate virtue as Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, and Dow Chemicals. The president subsequently appointed CropLife America vice president Islam A. Siddiqui to become the nation’s Chief Agricultural Negotiator. Siddiqui is not exactly what you would call a hero to the organic food movement. Nor has he made it his mission to defend future generations and the biological carrying capacity of the planet. When he oversaw the release of the National organic Program’s standards for organic food labeling, it was his bright idea to permit both irradiated and GMO foods to be labeled as organic. Click Here To Learn More

XENIA'S NOTES

Making healthful choices does not need to be expensive. We are all consumers to some degree, and we live in the real world. We are surrounded by smog, toxins, poisons and some of us even suffer from allergic and environmental issues. Let's try to barrel right through some of these issues and move-on.

Check ingredients on labels and do your homework. The internet is a useful tool especially when researching ingredients

Plan a meal-budget for the entire month

Plan a meal menu and when including meat or poultry, plan for nutritious bone stock/broth & soups. If you are looking for a clean, organically-grown source of fish, raised by hydroponics/aquaponics we can help.

Plan to cook at least one well balanced meal per day

Select fruit, vegetables, nuts, meats, poultry and eggs that are SUPER-FOODS, NUTRIENT-DENSE and have been grown by clean and ethical standards. There is no use in spending hard earned dollars on food that has LOW nutritional value.

Heritage, Standard Chickens are more nutritious than commercial or commodity chicken breeds. IMO: If you are consuming commercial chicken breeds, you are eating chickens that have been genetically modified to grow very fast. In fact, even when these chickens are grown outside on a pasture based system, they DO NOT forage! They must be fed a GRAIN-BASED diet. In addition, ALL commercial and commodity (fast-growing) chicken breeds are hatched in pesticide sprayed chambers and those hatching eggs are commonly vaccinated. You are wasting money and compromising the integrity of your nutritional intake.

Free Range Chickens that have been grown on forage, insects and grain-free/gluten-free diets, are healthier than chickens grown by sack feeds (even certified organic or soy-free/corn-free feeds). Grains cause enterititis and mycoplasmosis in chickens! IMO: If you are eating chickens grown on ANY commercial feeds, You are wasting your money and compromising the integrity of your nutritional intake. Chickens are healthiest & nutrient-dense when grown on a SPECIES-SPECIFIC DIET!. In-fact, staudies show that supplementing chickens with grain based feeds (yes, even certified organic) LOWERS the Omega 3/6 valuies.

Chicken begins to reach nutritional density at 12 weeks old. IMO: If you are consuming chicken that has been processed before 12 weeks of age, you are wasting money and compromising the integrity of your nutritional intake.